Kevin Williamson argues that freedom and democracy have to central to a renewed left in the wake of 20t century totalitarianism. Kevin is a writer, poet and activist. He is unaligned politically and a member of Greenpeace, the RSPB, and the Scottish Independence Convention. His most recent book was 'In A Room Darkened' - a collection of poetry published in 2007 by Two Ravens Press 
 

FREEDOM IS A NOBLE THING

“Freedom is a noble thing” was how Scottish writer John Barbour introduced his fourteenth century historical poem, The Bruce.  This is as fine a sentiment as opened any classic medieval text and even today the words resonate down the ages with an undiluted power.

Like all concepts of freedom Barbour’s was a product of its time and place.  His freedom was a national freedom inspired by the guerrilla struggles of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce during the Wars of Independence, as well as the sentiments expressed in the remarkable historical document now known as the Declaration of Arbroath.

Even in modern times this inspirational Scottish document, written in 1320, rings loud and clear with its clarion call to liberty.  Its lasting legacy is summarised in the pivotal sentence:  “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

The modern left could do a lot worse than internalising the democratic essence of this ancient document when standing in elections, pursing political actions, analysing historical events, or evaluating the type of societies that have sprung from sudden political and economic shifts of power.

When asked to write this short essay to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall two great events were brought to mind.  Both were incidents related to the way that a section of the Scottish left greeted two momentous historical events. Both have anniversaries this year.

Who can forget the emotional scenes witnessed in Edinburgh, and indeed all over Scotland, on that momentous day in 1999 when the Scottish Parliament was finally re-convened for the first time in 292 years.  Sheena Wellington caught the mood of the day with her beautiful rendition of Robert Burns’ ‘A Man’s A Man For A That’. Unabashed by the presence of royalty she sang a song of freedom and equality inspired by Thomas Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’.

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Yet on such a historical day of celebration and reflection a section of the Scottish left – including many of those who later formed the SSP – decided to organise a protest about student loans!  The historical and democratic significance of what was happening all around was lost on some who should really have known better.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall was another such occasion best swept under the leftist carpet.  All over the world million rightly celebrated whilst many on the Marxist left grumbled privately among themselves.  Instead of raising a glass of cheer to the overthrow of the totalitarian regimes of Easter Europe they rued what might have been and predicted gloom and doom “under capitalism” for those who lived in the former Communist Bloc countries. 

Many on the left still harken back nostalgically to a time when supposedly progressive leftist regimes created repressive obscenities like the Cheka (December 1917) and the Stasi (1950).  How could such a state of confusion exist?  What do secret police and surveillance and repression of political opponents have to do with progressive politics? Are universal suffrage and free elections not the foundations stones of democratic progress? 

How could the left have become so blasé about democracy?  Lest we forget Chartists and Suffragettes had given their liberty, and even their lives, to prise universal suffrage from the grasp of a privileged elite.  It is on their traditions and gains the modern progressive leftist stands.  Only an obsolete antideluvian left would be as politically disorientated as to utilise the methods and ideology of revolutionary movements which took place in pre-democratic eras.

There has never been a violent leftist or socialist revolution on the streets of any country where universal suffrage has been established and taken root. And for good reasons too.  Working people would never risk jeopardising their hard won democratic gains for a leap in the dark.  Especially after the disastrous experience of Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe and China.

Following the collapse of Communism the left desperately needed to reassess where it stood. This meant re-evaluating what was meant by “freedom” and “democracy” in the modern era.  What, for example, is the relationship between universal suffrage and social and economic progress?  These are still our Big Questions, the political equivalent of finding a quantum theory of gravity.

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall my own political thinking, out of necessity, has evolved from a simplistic authoritarian Trotskyism of the 1980s to a more libertarian leftist outlook today.  But it rests, implacably, on an unshakeable belief in the transformative power of freedom and democracy - as expressed by universal suffrage.  For me, universal suffrage – in the context of free elections, freedom of expression, and freedom to organise - is the primary tool for political change rather than some sort of bartering chip for economic gain.

When reflecting on the pros and cons of Soviet-style Communism the same principles can be applied. Communist states may well have provided the relative security of wee boxlike council flats, basic foods on the table, and regular work as cogs in a machine in which you had no control over. None of that, however, is worth giving up your political freedoms or personal liberties for. 

Jimmy Cliff couldn’t have put it better in his reggae classic “The Harder They Come’:

“And I keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you're dead you can't
But I'd rather be a free man in my grave

Than living as a puppet or a slave.”

Jimmy Cliff’s words encapsulate the sentiments of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath quoted earlier, and as a liberationist song it’s a damn sight more energising and uplifting than the weary old Communist Party anthem with its patronising lyrics about “starvelings” needing to arise from their supposed “slumber”. 

Since the Berlin Wall was torn down the economic security blanket provided by the Communist state has vanished for many families.  Living standards have deteriorated, unemployment has increased, the rich have gotten richer.  This is all true.  But there is a fundamental difference.  Unlike under the Nazi and Communist regimes universal suffrage provides the German people with the democratic tools to challenge the current power structures.

Under the Communism system there were no democratic tools available to the great mass of the people.  Instead there was a totalitarian one party state where the entire population faced repression, surveillance, torture, imprisonment or assassination if they were brave enough to challenge Communist rule.  Thankfully this type of state has been dismantled and only the most deluded authoritarian leftist or politically-castrated worker drone would miss it.

I don’t doubt that there are those on the left who still cling to Soviet and Eastern Bloc mythology.  These may be the same people who consider the highly entertaining but romantic political tosh of ‘Goodbye Lenin’ to be a more politically progressive movie than excellent ‘The Lives Of Others’.  This latter film is a vastly superior testament to everyday life in Stasi-controlled East Germany.

Eastern Bloc and Soviet Communism had few redeeming features.  Every economic and scientific advance was paid for in blood and repression.  There isn’t space here to comment on how this went wrong.  Suffice to say I’d tend to concur with Maurice Brinton’s essay “The Bolsheviks and Workers Control.” which is a brilliant forensic analysis of the early years of the Soviet experiment.  The clarity of thought and meticulous research in this text has helped remove the rose-tinted spectacles from many previous supporters of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin’s Bolshevik regime.

It is unlikely the experiments in state communism could have turned out other than they did.  States do what they always do which is to grow more bloated and more repressive until they are checked and challenged by democratically elected bodies.  Without universal suffrage they will inevitably turn on the people and suck them dry.

Lenin’s Bolsheviks like Mao’s Communists may have been able to gain control of a state that had collapsed after a period of prolonged global warfare but neither had any regard for the idea of universal suffrage and free elections.  The best that can be said for them is that, like the struggles of Wallace and Bruce, they were of their time.  And that they were supported by brave and honest people who took up arms against the old tyrannies.

When democracy is still in its infancy, going through its teething pains (such as in the 1920s and 1930s), or has yet to be firmly established (in the form of universal suffrage) it is perhaps inevitable that middle class leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Che, Castro, etcetera, will attempt to step into the void, assume leadership, and try and run things on behalf of working people.  Their class always do.

Such experiments in elitist control may have popular support among sections of the working class who have internalised fear and defeatism but the resulting political structures are neither blueprints nor inspiration for the future.

One party dictatorships - such as those in China, North Korea or even Cuba - have survived long past their sell-by dates.  Working people have tolerated their loss of liberty out of fear of intervention from outside or repression from above.  But even so, given time and changed circumstances, these same peoples will eventually regroup, re-examine the nature of freedom, explore the imaginative possibilities of democracy, and seek to deepen and strengthen these concepts and make them work for their own type of social structures.

What we have had here in the UK for the last eighty years or so is only the earliest stages of universal suffrage.  This is a necessary foundation upon which to build a more progressive society but it has still to get much beyond putting a cross in a box every four years.  Our Democracy Lite abrogates all personal responsibility and transfers decision-making to an elite political class.

Democracy is perhaps the greatest of all the creative arts.  Yet creative engagement with democracy has been stifled rather than encouraged since this doesn’t suit the interests of the ruling elite, professional politicians, and the managerial class.

For the progressive left the concepts of freedom and democracy need to be positioned at the centre of everything.  The real challenge is to find new innovative ways to extend and deepen democracy into every area of life – economic and social - rather than undermine it through a contemptuous attitude towards its current failings.  It’s a challenge that will sort out the liberationist wheat from the authoritarian chaff.